Shivraj Singh Chouhan, a favourite to win another term as Madhya Pradesh chief minister in the November 25 elections, is the party's antithesis to Narendra Modi

BHOPAL: Waqar Alam, 20, will cast the first vote of his life on November 25. This young man from the Bhopal (North) constituency says he will vote for the Congress candidate Arif Aqeel, not especially because he loves the party for its so-called secular credentials, but because it is not Shivraj Singh Chouhan who is the local BJP candidate.

Alam, who resides in the Model Ground area and works as a manager in a boutique hotel in the quiet and affluent Shyamla Hills locality of the state capital of Madhya Pradesh, says that "Shivraj is very good," and he has no doubts about his "integrity, efficiency and devotion" to people across communities.

"But then it is Arif Baig who is the BJP candidate in our seat," says Alam. The Congress rival and current MLA, Aqeel is popular for being accessible for anyone anytime, says Alam. Besides, though Baig is a veteran politician of 78 years and has been a "party hopper" - someone who has contested polls on Janata Party, Congress and BJP tickets over the long time he has been around - Alam hadn't heard much of Baig until he was named a candidate in the state polls. Alam wants Chouhan to return as chief minister but he wants to elect a good MLA, too, he laughs.

For a leader of a party known to be Hindu nationalist, for a party that, especially in Madhya Pradesh, is controlled by the RSS whose leaders shun invitations to iftaar parties, Chouhan is an oddball of a BJP leader at a time when his party's poster boy and prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is seen as ultra-nationalist and perceived, to say the least, as anti-Muslim.

QUITE UNLIKE THE OTHER

Modi backers often dismiss their hero's anti-Muslim bias as sheer propaganda, but it is an undeniable truth that the Gujarat chief minister suffers from an image deficit worldwide for being a hardliner.

The day after he was re-elected as chief minister for the third term last year, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who has written extensively about violence against minorities in Gujarat in 2002 under Modi's guard, called his poll triumph a shame on the people of Gujarat. In an interview with ET, she said that by re-electing him, Gujarat reelected an outlaw and a person whose world reputation is synonymous with hatred for Muslims and fomenting violence against them.

"I think that the victory of Modi is a huge black mark for Gujarat," Nussbaum, who shot to fame with her stellar work The Fragility of Goodness, said. "Modi has long been denied a visa to enter the US because of his complicity in the 2002 pogrom, as ascertained by the US State Department. But the Naroda Patiya verdicts make official the fact that responsibility for heinous crimes goes very high up in his government," she noted.

Nussbaum, professor of philosophy and law at Chicago University, later complained of sexist and intolerant comments from Modi fans who flooded her official mailbox with hate mails.

PASSION VS COMPASSION

Modi evokes strong emotions, Chouhan doesn't.

As Madhya Pradesh goes to the polls on Monday, what comes to the fore, feels sociologist Shiv Visvanathan, is one of Chouhan's key attributes: that he is electorally sensitive to the idea that communities should co-exist. "Chouhan wants to respect the diversity of his state. At the poll level, he is not seen as threatening by the minority communities, especially the Muslims, which unfortunately is not the case with Modi," says Visvanathan.

Interestingly, voters in the state such as Alam aren't even worried about the "politics of symbolism" Chouhan has managed to foster - Alam takes it for granted because for him Chouhan is a do-gooder and a nice man. While Modi, for Alam, appears threatening thanks to the baggage that he carries - the 2002 riots that saw widespread violence against Muslims in Gujarat barely five months after he took over as chief minister in October 2001 - Chouhan epitomizes sobriety. "He is simply good," says Alam.

At least two BJP leaders in the state admit that "good public relations and image management" have endeared Chouhan to people across communities. His strategists -people hired to manage Brand Chouhan - contend that he has rubbed shoulders with Muslims leaders on festive occasions for the community much before he had become chief minister in 2005. They note that Chouhan himself had pointed out earlier that his gestures - from wearing a skullcap on Eid to being seen with Muslim community leaders at iftaar parties - are not "new-found habits".

In fact, in a recent interview to The Times of India - when asked whether he was sending out a message through such acts that he could be the secular and moderate alternative in a BJP that is struggling to shed its hardline image among Muslims - he said: "I didn't wear it for the first time on Eid. I don't believe in the narrow politics of tilak and topi," he said.

Most Muslim community leaders ET Magazine spoke to said they are glad the Chouhan-led BJP government doesn't 'target' Muslims. Meanwhile, Abdul Jabbar, the legendary crusader in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, said the government however pursues "controlled violence" against Muslims. "The BJP resorts to blackmail tactics against Muslim traders and others warning of consequences if they backed the Congress, which is in disarray and some of whose leaders are hand in glove with the ruling party in corruption," he said. ET Magazine couldn't independently verify these charges.

THE ADVANI EFFECT

Lal Krishna Advani did really set the cat among the pigeons when he suggested several months ago that Chouhan was a better chief minister than Modi. Though it is well-known that Advani was piqued at Modi being projected as the PM candidate of his party, Chouhan is increasingly being seen as the BJP's "second best bet", says Visvanathan.

The sociologist talks about "the game of comparison" with Modi: "It is clear that he is being seen as No. 2 for the BJP for the top post [of prime minister] whether he denies it or not. The BJP has been trying to project him also because it wants to show that it has many arrows in its quiver, not just one," he says emphasizing that Modi comes with a "certain stain" to the national mainstream and that while Chouhan is still seen as a person who is now confined to the state-level, the BJP is aware of his reputation and sees him "as a good bet [for national politics]".

Chouhan scores high on other counts, too, contends Visvanathan. "He is politically very sensitive, to begin with. He is careful in managing political emotions such as doing good for all communities and not being perceived as against any one community," he adds. In fact, unlike the "Hindu-oriented" schemes to help pilgrims in various other states, Madhya Pradesh's Mukhya Mantri Teerth Darshan Yojna promotes pilgrimages to various places considered sacred by Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs.

Chouhan flagging off a train for pilgrims to Ajmer Sharif from the Habibganj railway station in Bhopal was a highly photographed event. According to the MP government's scheme, such trains take senior citizens to 17 places of religious interest, including Badrinath, Kedarnath, Rameshwaram, Dwarka, Amritsar, Shravanabelagola and Vailankanni church besides Ajmer Sharif.

A STUDY IN CONTRAST

On the other hand, Modi's body language and choice of words have attracted much criticism for religious intolerance. He is also perceived to be authoritarian and a polarizing figure.

In an interview in July this year, he broke his silence about the 2002 riots and said that he was saddened by what had happened to Muslims of the state - but, as luck would have it, the rustic way he put it forced a Muslim leader of his party, Aamir Raza, to quit, calling his comments despicable and divisive. Modi had said, "Another thing... if we are driving a car, we are a driver, or if someone else is driving a car and we're sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will be painful or not?"

LEADER VS LEADER

Clearly, the contrast between Modi and Chouhan, who has referred to the former as his older brother, is stark: the former is seen as polarizing and the latter a unifier of sorts, Visvanathan argues.

Of late, though, Modi has tried to warm up to Muslim community leaders, some of whom have openly reposed faith in his "administrative" skills while not talking about his other attributes. While nobody contests Modi's ability to showcase Gujarat as a highly investor-friendly location, Chouhan, too, has won praise for his administrative skills.

From the broad contours of a high-voltage poll campaign in Madhya Pradesh, Chouhan is a clearly a breakaway from the usual mould of leaders from his party. He is also seen as hope for the BJP - both in the state and perhaps outside - whose political masters have often blamed the Congress for setting aside huge funds to help with Haj pilgrimage, calling such moves minorityism and pseudo-secularism.

Besides, it appears that there seems to be a tug of war for Chouhan. "We want him for the state," says BJP organizational secretary and RSS pracharak Arvind Menon, stressing that he doesn't have any national aspirations as of now. Not yet.